Notes on unipotent classes (Q1293775)

The purpose of this paper is to take some of the mystery out of the concept of a special unipotent conjugacy class by giving a more geometric treatment in terms of the closely related special pieces introduced by \textit{N. Spaltenstein} [Classes unipotentes et sous-groupes de Borel, Lect. Notes Math. 946 (1982; Zbl 0486.20025)]. Let \(G\) be a semisimple, almost simple algebraic group over \(\mathbb{C}\). A unipotent class \(C\) is special if the representation \(\rho_C\) of \(W\), attached to it by the Springer correspondence, is in the class \({\mathcal S}_W\) of \textit{G. Lusztig} [Indag. Math. 44, 219-226 (1982; Zbl 0511.20034)]. A special piece is the closure of a special class from which smaller closures of special classes have been deleted. Spaltenstein has shown they form a partition of the unipotent variety \(\mathcal U\). The author now shows that two unipotent classes belong to the same special piece if and only if in the Springer correspondence they yield representations of \(W\) that belong to the same two-sided cell. Now recall a construction from \textit{G. Lusztig} [Characters of reductive groups over a finite field, Ann. Math. Stud. 107 (1984; Zbl 0556.20033)]. To an irreducible representation of \(W\), belonging to a two-sided cell \(\mathbf c\), Lusztig attaches a pair \((g,\tau)\), where \(g\) is an element, defined up to conjugacy, of a certain finite group \({\mathcal G}_{\mathbf c}\) and \(\tau\) is a representation of the centralizer of \(g\). He now shows that this gives a one to one correspondence of the special classes with the conjugacy classes of a certain subgroup \({\mathcal G}_{\mathbf c}'\) of \({\mathcal G}_{\mathbf c}\). (One has \(\tau=1\) for a special class.) It is expected that for \(G\) of adjoint type a special piece is always a quotient of a smooth variety by an action of \({\mathcal G}_{\mathbf c}'\). Some evidence is presented for this. Finally the special unipotent classes of \(\text{Sp}_{2r}(\mathbb{C})\) are compared with those of \(\text{SO}_{2r+1}(\mathbb{C})\).